The Senior 3 race at Hagerstown was exciting and fresh. I was the only Evo racer in that category, but I knew the guys from NCVC and from Artemis, so I quickly formed some attack plans. Around lap 2 myself and another guy from NCVC got away and stayed away for about 5 laps. On the 5th lap he started to ease up, and I asked what was wrong, and he confirmed that he was waiting for his counter attack, the "real" breakaway. So, I sat on his wheel until we got caught. A little later another group of us got away. This time we had 5 guys, one of whom was an NCVC rider I knew to be reasonably strong. He and I pulled hard, as did another rider, but we had two riders who weren't cutting it. We tried to do a real rotation, and one of the weak guys, instead of pulling through, simply sat on the wheel of the guy in front instead of pulling through. This led me to an expletive or two, which I shouldn't have said probably. Later, with a group of 5 guys, not including me, away, I decided there was no way I was going to let somebody's elses break away make it. So, I worked with 2 other guys to bridge the pack up. With 6 laps to go we were probably only 50 yards back from the group of 5 in front. At which point, the pack pretty much decided to let them sit out there, and we stopped working to reel them in and just maintained a reasonable distance. With just over one lap to go we pounced and swept passed the break away (who should've been smart enough to figure out what we were doing and come back on their own). I was in good position, and even though I'd been working hard on a couple of breaks, I still had legs. I finished 3rd, missing 2nd by what felt like half a wheel, and missing first by just over a bike length.
Later I heard my name called the officials tent. Hmmmmm, I wonder what they want to talk about? Apparently I was heard by a number of judges issuing a few choice remarks to some of the other riders. Whooops. Fortunately for me they simply gave me a stern talking to and let me keep my 3rd place finish.
On an even higher note, I believe Vic the Brick won the 45+ Category at Hagerstown, making him the MABRA 45+ District Champion! Awesome job Vic! And Nima won the 30+ race!
Vic's response:
Well, yeah, . . .I did win the 45+, but it's not quite as glamorous as it sounds! This race was the 40+ D20 Crit championships and MABRA decided to be nice enough to give out medals for every 5 year age group. I placed 8th overall and it just so happened, I was the first 45+ guy across the line and ended up with a gold medal (I don’t think there’s a title associated with this)!
Rudy was in the race with me too, but then about half way through, he had a mechanical that forced him to watch the rest from the sidelines. The race was a typical 40+ race, fast with nonstop attacks. I stayed in the top 10 positions pretty much all race and jumped in on every attack, to make sure I wasn’t going to miss a major break. After the last “climb” it was a full out drag race to the line, where I desperately tried to hang on the Superdave and Ramon’s wheels. I managed to lay down a pretty descent sprint where I was able to pass 2 or 3 guys and take 8th.